Cannes [France], May 19 : Actor Dakota Johnson is planning to direct her first feature, from a script written by Cha Cha Real Smooth actress Vanessa Burghardt.
Speaking at the Kering Women in Motion conversation event alongside her TeaTime Pictures producing partner Ro Donnelly on Monday at Cannes, Johnson opened up about her plans to go behind the camera, as per Deadline.
She said, "The girl that plays my daughter [in Cha Cha Real Smooth], Vanessa Burkhart, she is an autistic actress and musician and brilliant person, and we have been working with her on developing a script. She's written a script, and it's really special, and it's about a young woman with autism. I feel very protective of her and her story in her mind, she's just an unbelievable woman. I just don't think I could allow anyone else to direct it. So we'll see."
Johnson directed her first short, Loser Baby, which premiered at TIFF last fall. She admitted to extreme disappointment when that "proof of concept" was not picked up as a television show, saying, "It's a short film about queer friends living in Los Angeles and their relationships and their complications and their friendships and their sexuality and their identity, and nobody wanted to f-king make it. And I was like, 'Why? That's such a global conversation, and it should be talked about all the time,' but whatever. So it was a proof of concept that just is sitting there, proofing."
Johnson is at Cannes with the Michael Angelo Covino-directed Splitsville, which she co-produced and in which she stars as a woman in an open relationship who tries to help a male friend recover from a breakup.